Hey guys, Jeremy here with KISS Aquatic Systems
k-i-s-s keep it simple stupid. So today we are going to talk about
house plants, and in particular how much house plants really really love dirty fish tank water.
These are my house plants, and as you can see I really do have way way too many.
To the point where it's a little bit weird and embarrassing.
In all fairness though it's not entirely my fault. So I've been keeping house plants for
about three years, and of everything you see here today probably 75, 80 percent of it is really just
organic growth. And I believe the number one driver of that growth is the fact that I use
fish tank water for these plants rather than just normal tap water.
So in this video first I'm going to go through in great detail how I set up and take care of these
plants to show clearly that it is the fish tank water that is driving the growth here,
and then I will talk about why fish tank water is so much better for plants than normal tap water.
So let's start with the substrate. I do not use normal organic potting soil for these plants. The
reason being is that I started off using normal organic potting soil and I had a huge problem with
fungus gnats, which as I understand is actually a fairly common problem with house plants.
So normal dirt or potting soil is extremely rich in all different kinds of nutrients,
way more nutrients than your plants can use in any reasonable amount of time.
And I, as many people do, tend to overwater my plants or at least I used to.
So the combination of very high nutrients and moist environment
led to fungus growth and with the fungus growth I also had a thriving colony of fungus gnats,
which was really annoying. So very early on, I decided to get rid of all my potting soil
and instead build my own soilless potting mix that is very very low in nutrients. Well the
base of my potting mix, it's probably about eighty percent peat moss and twenty percent play sand.
Peat moss is a very common and cheap and popular soil alternative. So what it is, it's decomposed
sphagnum moss that's been sitting on the bottom of a peat bog for a few hundred years. It's mined,
it's dried out, it's baked, and then it's sold at garden centers at a pretty reasonable price.
And I use the play sand to add heft and weight to my soilless potting mix. Truth is,
peat moss is a bit light and I don't want my plants ever to tip over.
People also use sand in their soilless potting mixes
to create additional drainage for water. Play sand is not all that great for that to be honest.
It's a very fine grain, easily compacting sand so it doesn't allow a whole lot of drainage.
A better drainage sand would probably be a larger grain sand like a pool of filter sand,
but play sand works okay as you can see with my plants.
I also have a generous amount of perlite in my soilless potting mix, and garden lime.
So many people use perlite or vermiculite in their potting mixes to help retain water.
Sounds a bit weird, but when you're building a plant mix you want to be able to both
drain water easily and retain water. So you want to drain water because you don't want
your roots to become waterlogged and create problems like root rot or fungus gnats
and you want to retain enough water for your plant to be able to draw from between waterings.
Perlite and vermiculite are both great for holding on to water between waterings.
Vermiculite is generally a bit better, but I use perlite. It works just fine for most plants.
Obviously if you have a
bog plant or a water loving plant you might want to do things a bit differently.
And lastly, I use garden lime to buffer up my mix and bring up my pH.
So peat moss is a great alternative to dirt, but it has a very low pH, usually in the mid 4's.
And the water I'm using for my plants is also soft and acidic. And the truth is many people's
plant substrates do acidify over time, so it is helpful from time to time to add something like
garden lime into your plant substrate to help buffer it up and
bring your pH to a reasonable level, call it mid 6's where most plants will do well.
So that's all on the substrate. Very very low in nutrients,
the only nutrients that I'm providing through my substrate are whatever is in the peat moss,
which provides some but not a significant amount of help for my plants.
I really do rely on my fish tank water to provide the vast majority of my nutrients.
Moving on to lighting, as you can see here, I have these plants facing a relatively large
south-ish facing window. It's probably more of a southeast facing window.
Now I get pretty decent sunlight most times of year, I'm in the woods so not a ton of sun but
enough for these plants to generate decent photosynthesis.
I also supplement the natural lighting with a fixture as you can see,
where I am currently running five 6500K CFL bulbs. Not a huge fan of these bulbs to be honest,
I think I'm actually going to swap them out pretty soon with some nice 6500K LEDs.
So the CFL bulbs tend to run a bit hotter than LEDs, and from time to time
they do release a faint odor of burning plastic or burning chemicals that I am not a fan of.
So I don't often sniff my light bulbs, but I generally do want them to be odorless. And I think
the fact that the LEDs run a bit cooler puts less pressure on the plastic in this cheap and simple
light fixture. By the way, 6500K is a great spectrum for photosynthesis and plant growth.
Also happens to be the same way I light my reef tank for my corals.
So moving on from lighting, the
humidity in this room usually runs somewhere between 30 to 40 percent.
Which is fairly dry and on the dry end for plants, but they have learned to cope and adapt.
Most house plants are tropicals, and most plants in general like conditions to be a bit more humid.
It helps prevent the leaves from drying out. But many plants given time can adapt to the
somewhat drier conditions that are better in general for indoor environments.
Because as we all know, if your house or apartment is too humid for too long,
it can create mold and other issues. So good/helpful to get
your houseplants to acclimate to the drier conditions that are better for humans.
So as you can see, overall the conditions I have my plants in are not great by themselves for
growth. I use a very very low nutrient soilless potting mix, I provide adequate but modest levels
of lighting, and a sub-optimal dry environment for these plants. The reason they do so well
is because of the fish tank water that I use. So the only work that I do with these plants is
every two weeks I will take exactly four gallons of water from one of my fish tanks,
particularly I use the 40 gallon hillstream tank because it's not heavily planted,
and I use that to water my plants.
Provides all of the water they need and almost all of the nutrients that they need.
So why do houseplants love fish tank water? Three main reasons for this. Number one is the
fact that unlike your city tap water that you are most probably using instead of fish tank water,
fish tank water does not have any chlorine or chloramines in it.
Now, chlorine and chloramines are poisons. They are toxic to almost all forms of life,
which is why we load them up in our swimming pools and why we also add them to our tap water
in levels that are not particularly harmful to us humans but are likely to kill any sorts of
bacteria or other things that could otherwise live in our tap water and cause some serious
health problems. So it's a good thing to have chlorine in our source tap water
for us, but not so good for our plants. And it's really terrible for all the bacteria and
microorganisms that are symbiotic with our plants that live in our substrates with our plant roots.
So the simple fact that fish tank water does not or really should not contain any chlorine or
chloramines makes it vastly superior to ordinary tap water when it comes to watering plants.
Now some of the hardier house plants can handle
some of the chlorine that we have in our tap water, but they would do much better without it.
And a lot of the more fragile, sensitive, advanced house plants
like orchids and things like that will really not do well in general with chlorinated tap water.
The second big benefit with using aquarium water versus tap water for house plants
is all the nutrients that you can provide with the aquarium water.
So what are aquariums? By definition, aquariums are tiny boxes of water
that are dramatically and gratuitously overstocked with interesting life forms that we enjoy seeing.
And as you might guess, the water in aquariums is often brimming with all kinds of nutrients.
So unless you're talking about a heavily planted tank which is a bit lower in nutrients,
most fish tank water has significant amounts of really every kind of nutrient that your
house plants will need to survive and thrive. Now these nutrients will be available both in
readily accessible ionic forms, as well as entrapped in the particulate and dissolved
organic carbon that will slowly break down over time in your substrate and feed your
plants. Fish tank water is often rich in macronutrients like nitrates and phosphates,
and usually has a fair amount of easily accessible trace elements and ions terms of iron, magnesium,
calcium, really anything your plants need is available to some extent in fish tank water.
Now the third benefit of using fish tank water for your plants
isn't just the fact that it provides every nutrient that your plant needs,
but also the way those nutrients are added. So ideally, what you want to happen is
every two weeks as you water your house plants, you provide a certain stream of nutrients.
You want your plants to be uptaking those nutrients at a similar rate at which it's added.
As I learned the hard way with my original heavy organic potting mix disaster,
too much of a good thing is a bad thing. So if you're adding a lot of excess nutrients
that your plants aren't able to use quickly, well life is adaptable and it finds a way. And
usually something else will pop up that will use those nutrients. And sometimes
the things that pop up, like fungus or fungus gnats, are not things you want
in your system. So the slow and steady release of nutrients that you get by using fish tank water
versus a really really heavily fertilized soil up front or dumping tons of fertilizer
on your plants from time to time is a much better, safer way to add nutrients to your house plants.
So taken together, as you can see house plants and plants in general really really love and benefit
from fish tank water. So if you are looking to get rampant growth from your house plants,
get a fish tank and use some of the water every week or so or every two weeks to water
your plants. Before long, you will find yourself the proud owner of a lush and thriving jungle.
So yeah, thanks guys. That's all on houseplants for now. Take care and hope you enjoyed the video.